In today's interconnected world, the way students learn is increasingly reliant on digital technologies. This doesn't
just mean having the newest resources and gadgets, it means fully integrating digital learning throughout the entire educational experience. Schools and districts nationwide are raising their voices in support of digital learning on Wednesday — plan your own event, or join DLD for a live webcast from the Library of Congress at 11 am ET. Help us make a difference in the future of education!

Hear directly from the experts: leaders from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers will discuss the assessments they've created and how you can best prepare for them. Don't miss this exclusive chance to have your questions answered — go directly to the source with our webinar! Register here to join us next week.

Have you signed up for CoSN14 yet?CoSNNo? What are you waiting for? Register now — before prices go up on Friday! Join us for the best professional development event of the year, complete with diverse breakout sessions, compelling keynotes, and exclusive pre- and post-conference learning opportunities. Be a failure at our first ever CoSNCamp, then turn those failures into successes by networking with other conference attendees.

We'll also be hosting a special CETL exam administration at the conference — jump-start your professional development by studying up before then!

Personalized progress: How tech model is driving achievementDistrict Administration Magazine Personalized learning is beginning to produce positive results in student achievement as it becomes more established in districts nationwide. These success stories are encouraging more districts to adopt the tech-heavy learning model that's designed to customize education for each student. At FirstLine Schools, a New Orleans charter network where most students are low-income and many have special needs, the personalized learning approach has produced some of the highest scores on the Louisiana state assessment in the New Orleans area, says Chris Liang-Vergera, FirstLine's director of instructional technology for personalized learning.

Factors that might stall IT hiring this yearComputerworldThe IT job market is slowing down, use of contingency workers is picking up, and Congress has an unfinished fight ahead on the H-1B visa. In sum, this is going to be an interesting year for IT employment, politically and on the job front. In quick summary, here are five of the major IT hiring trends.

Core capacity: Going beyond required tech upgradesDistrict Administration Magazine Implementing technology upgrades required for Common Core assessments can be more opportunity than burden for districts seeking the most academic achievement from their IT spending.

Many districts go without a chief technology officerEducation WeekTechnology leadership in many districts is provided not by one person, but through whatever arrangements the school systems can muster. Even as schools juggle a daunting array of evolving technological demands, federal data show that roughly half of districts do not have a full-time chief technology officer or technology manager whose sole job is to oversee all digital needs.

Mobile study: Tablets make a difference in teaching and learningTHE JournalA pair of studies released Wednesday — the first of their kind — found that tablets can make a difference in the learning habits of students. The studies are part of a new Making Learning Mobile project, an attempt to quantify and qualify the benefits of mobile technology in education and the infrastructure needed to support mobile activities

Are you a credible technology leader?Education WeekWhy do forward thinking leaders need to use technology? Why is it no longer possible to separate good leadership and technology leadership? We contend all educational leaders have a responsibility to learn and use technology. The idea that education can exist without using technology is increasingly preposterous. This is true not only because students are engaged in its use, not only because we are preparing our students to be college and career ready, but because they are living in that environment now and with ease.

Do tablets teach? Parents see mobile devices as underachievers, study findsThe Christian Science Monitor Despite an explosion in the number of educational apps marketed for preschoolers and elementary school-aged children, parents see their young children spending relatively little time learning on mobile devices, according to a new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit that researches and produces educational media for children. The study, which surveyed parents about their 2- to 10-year-olds' media use, found that while 65 percent of children use mobile devices, only 9 percent play what their parents describe as "educational" mobile games daily, and only 35 percent use educational apps even weekly.

Consortium for School NetworkingFrom Vision to Action: The 21st Century Teaching and Learning Plan. Designed to help educators understand and implement 21st century teaching and learning, the course includes readings, videos, presentations, questions designed to provide immediate feedback, application exercises and customizable tools that can be downloaded.

Maryland schools need $100 million in technology upgrades for new testingThe Baltimore SunMaryland schools will be scrambling to make $100 million in technological and other upgrades to give new state tests aligned with the Common Core standards next year, according to a report to the legislature by the Maryland State Department of Education. Some local school systems would need to shut down some of the normal uses of the computers, including sending email, to give the online standardized tests, the report said. Some districts reported that they need to buy thousands of new computers for the tests, which are required by the spring of 2015; others said they had nowhere to put the computers that they need to buy.

Some Michigan schools districts not ready for shift to online testsThe Detroit News Seven students at a Grosse Pointe elementary school were midway through a 45-minute online math test when their computers crashed. As another 18 students continued to type answers on their keyboards, the unlucky fifth-graders were rebooting their computers. Most lost all of their work and had to retake the test. "It was complete frustration," said Melanie O'Neil, a district principal who was an observer for the state's Smarter Balanced pilot test last April.

Core capacity: Going beyond required tech upgradesDistrict Administration Magazine Implementing technology upgrades required for Common Core assessments can be more opportunity than burden for districts seeking the most academic achievement from their IT spending. The new assessments demand a certain amount of bandwidth and updated operating systems, but by upgrading Wi-Fi networks, hardware and software beyond what the online assessments require, experts say districts also can make substantial improvements to everyday instruction — which, in turn, could lead to higher achievement and test scores.

St. Paul school district working toward computer-per-studentPioneer PressThe St. Paul school district is contemplating a major investment in laptops and tablets that could eventually ensure each middle and high school student has a device at school. The move is part of the district's ambitious plan to harness technology in teaching and learning, backed by local taxpayers with an annual $9 million levy increase in 2012.

Will Net Neutrality ruling doom education to second-class status?THE JournalThe ruling by a federal court on the Open Internet (Net Neutrality) Order may turn out to be, as one commenter called it, "a terrible idea," or, as another observer put it, a source of "a lot of overheated rhetoric." Education, for its part, could well see major changes to how it's able to deliver learning content to students online while at the same time positioning itself to become a major alternative supplier of broadband in this country.

US court ruling raises K-12 concerns about Internet accessEducation Week Teachers and students count on having relatively broad access to online academic content, but a recent federal court ruling has raised questions about whether the education community could lose some of its ability to tap into the vast library of Internet resources. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia this month has been interpreted as giving commercial Internet providers significantly more power to block content or set conditions on its delivery before it reaches customers, including schools.